Quotes from Vivek Shraya

I think white artists have a responsibility to be not only naming white supremacy, but to be using their power and privilege to support artists of color.

Now is not the time for Canadians to be sanctimonious. It is time for us to be prudent and active.

I have dedicated a significant portion of my time and artistry to making art that addresses various forms of oppression, including white supremacy, misogyny, and biphobia.

I couldn't write about love without writing about hate - specifically, how the experience of hatred embeds itself in the body and prevents love from entering or leaving.

Writing about racism requires a directness that writing a love story does not.

Music is my first love, where my artistic journey began.

Children are receptive to talking about gender creativity, confirming the importance of the book as a means to instigate this dialogue at an early age.

Children's books have great potential to reveal new possibilities to readers, because the intended audience is at an age of genuine learning.

Despite the fact that I'm not highly skilled in any visual art, aesthetics have always played a strong role in my art, including my first albums.

I have been and continue to be committed to art as a tool to ignite, comfort, and discomfort.

I do use art as a site of protest, particularly in relation to dominant narratives.

I feel like I have had to catch up to the art I've made, and learn from the protagonists I have written, especially in relation to gender.

It's exciting to consider how art, in its ability to reveal, can be ahead of the artist.

My art career often feels less like an art career and more like a career in educating, usually by using my body.

If anything, I have witnessed the ways my art travels, or is rendered more accessible, when sanctioned by or connected to white artists.

Art can sometimes be separate from the artist.

As a brown artist, I have mixed feelings about my relationship to art and my "responsibilities" post-Trump.

I have always considered the aesthetic of a project, including press photos, as a means to further the message of the art itself.

As a general rule, I tend to collaborate with artists whose work I admire.

I always work with text orally in the writing process, saying passages aloud to measure flow.